Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed organized and supported the submission, reception, and presentation of the panel “Salons, Skateboarding, and Tabletop Gaming: Stories of ‘Alternative’ Intersectional Gender Expression in Recreational Communities,” presented on April 4 at the 2025 Southwestern Anthropology Association Conference in Pomona, CA. During this panel, anthropology and classics double major Marley Sensenderfer ’25 chaired the session and presented the paper talk “Roll for Stereotypes: D&D and Gender Performativity Tabletop role-playing games,” anthropology major Emma French ’25 presented the paper talk “Gender and Skateboarding Culture,” and anthropology and environmental studies double major Rose Reed ’25 presented the paper talk “White Beauty Standards in a Hair and Nail Salon.” This panel was a collaboration of three student anthropology capstone research projects that deconstruct intersectional manifestations of gender in public space via insider (or native) ethnographic analysis. More information on the session and the conference can be found here.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed organized a panel titled “Blackness and Whiteness in the Americas: Race Across Space and Time” for the American Anthropological Association’s 2024 annual meeting in Tampa, FL on November 21. Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson served as the chair for the panel. During this session, Dr. Reed presented the paper “Black Surrogacy and the Sugar Land 95: How White Officials in Sugar Land, Texas use Black Subjectivity to Fabricate a Social Justice Image,” Dr. Johnson presented the paper “Emerging Racial Categories and their Socio-ecological Context on the British Coast of Central America in the Late 1700s,” and undergraduate honors anthropology student Constanza Cameron ’24 presented the paper “Chilean Whiteness: Affective Dispositions Regarding Race and Class.” Alumnus Zacharia Arifi ’24 presented the poster presentation “1760 Hors Place: Discursive Identity Formation of the Franco-Kabyle Diaspora and the PostKabyle” as well. Abstracts of the panel, the papers, and the poster can be found here.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed (panel organizer) and Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson (panel chair), along with two SCOPE undergraduate students, Rose Reed ’25 and Kalista Esquivel ’26, presented their panel “Unsilencing the Past: How Oral Histories Give Voice to Black and Latinx Students at Southwestern University” on April 18 at the Southwestern Social Science Association Conference in New Orleans, LA. Dr. Johnson discussed the foundational history of the University and the founding of The SU Racial History Project. Dr. Reed discussed the liberatory potential of oral histories and why this particular method is key to unsilencing the voices of the oppressed at a predominantly white institution. Rose presented the oral history of Lynette Philips, a Black woman who attended Southwestern University between 1980-1984, played basketball for the university, and was very active on campus. Kalista presented the oral history of Eva Mendiola, a Mexican-American woman who attended Southwestern University from 1972-1975 and founded the volleyball team, which was the first women’s sports team on campus. Future plans include submitting these student papers to a special issue of an oral history journal. The conference program can be viewed here.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed and investigative journalist Brittney Martin received a 2024 Gracie Award for Best Investigative Feature [Radio ‐ Nationally Syndicated Non‐Commercial] for their podcast series “Sugar Land.” The Gracie Awards celebrate women in media. More info can be found here.

Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed was invited to present at the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration Historical Studies of Texas Symposium on February 9th and 10th in Austin, Texas. On the roundtable “Community-Based Scholarship,” she explored who gets to be “community” when decisions are being made about forgotten Black cemeteries such as The Bullhead Camp Cemetery (the current resting place of the Sugar Land 95). She discussed how the Texas Antiquities Code requires community input when remains are discovered and how the broader Black descendant community of the 95 has been ignored, thus resulting in subpar memorialization efforts by the local school district that owns the land the bodies are buried on.